Hiss Golden Messenger

Hiss Golden Messenger’s Quietly Blowing It was written and arranged by M.C. Taylor in his home studio—his 8’ × 10’ sanctuary packed floor to ceiling with books, records, and old guitars—as he watched the chaotic world spin outside his window. Between March and June 2020, Taylor wrote and recorded upwards of two dozen songs—in most cases playing all of the instruments himself—before winnowing the collection down and bringing them to the Hiss band. In July, the group of musicians, with Taylor in the production seat, went into Overdub Lane in Durham, NC, for a week, where they recorded Quietly Blowing It as an organic unit honed to a fine edge from their years together on the road.

On November 2, Hiss Golden Messenger will release Devotion: Songs About Rivers and Spirits and Children, a limited-edition deluxe box set which includes remastered reissues of the classic Hiss albums Bad Debt, Poor Moon, and Haw as well as Virgo Fool, a rarities compilation that will only be available physically as part of this collection.

From Hiss Golden Messenger songwriter and bandleader M.C. Taylor: I composed the songs that became Terms of Surrender with no guarantee that they would ever become a record; they felt too raw to be of interest to anyone but myself. They were my therapy and my church. But then we were there in Aaron Dessner’s studio in upstate New York, and in Sound City in L.A., and Roger Moutenot’s Haptown Studio in Nashville, and Phil Cook’s harmonica was screaming and Jenny Lewis was singing and Josh Kaufman’s guitar was etching the cosmos, and I realized that maybe these songs were good for something after all, and it wasn’t my year to die. And I was glad—appreciative, maybe—of the previous year because things on the other side now looked sweeter and brighter and not so dire. And through the songs ran a line—the most important theme of the whole record, I know now—about love, and how nothing of value that I have created would exist without it, and I better goddamn well keep my eye on it. Love is so powerful that people made religion to give a name to it, but if we don’t treat it with a sensitive touch, it disappears like smoke. I had a dream once, many years ago, where I heard a voice say “God is love,” and I felt it with my whole being. This record is a reminder of that dream.

Hiss Golden Messenger, the M.C. Taylor-fronted folk band, have announced their next studio album. Hallelujah Anyhow—the follow-up to last year’s Heart Like a Levee—is out September 22 via Merge Records. The 10-track LP was produced by Taylor and Megafaun’s Brad Cook, who also plays bass guitar. It was recorded with Brad and Phil Cook, Chris Boerner, Josh Kaufman, Darren Jessee, Michael Lewis, and Scott Hirsch. In addition, there are vocal contributions from Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Tift Merritt, Skylar Gudasz, Tamisha Waden, and John Paul White. (The Cooks, Lewis, Sauser-Monnig, and Merritt all contributed to Heart Like a Levee.) Below, find the Hallelujah Anyhow tracklist, as well as Hiss Golden Messenger’s upcoming tour dates.